Come together: Thinking as a region makes business sense

The new Frontier Airlines route with direct flights from HIA to Denver opens our area up to a new part of America.

Whether or not you’ve ridden Hersheypark’s new roller coaster, Skyrush, it’s time to put some adrenaline back in the Harrisburg area.

We have a lot to tout in our region, and we need to start doing a better job of it.

We also have to start talking and thinking more as a region and less like fiefdoms.

Mention Hershey and people nationwide tend to smile and think of chocolates and perhaps a childhood trip to the amusement park, but they often don’t know it’s only a few miles from Harrisburg.

The same is true of Carlisle. People in the military know Carlisle well because of the U.S. Army War College, Carlisle Barracks and the U.S. Army Heritage Center, yet they, too, often fail to realize Carlisle is only a few miles from Harrisburg and Gettysburg.

We are no New York, but our region — if we start thinking more like a region — has critical mass.

The U.S. Census Bureau ranks metropolitan areas in this country. According to the bean counters, the Harrisburg-Carlisle area ranks 94th in the nation. That means we’re about as big as places such as Madison, Wis., and Des Moines, Iowa.

If we go a step wider and talk about the Harrisburg-Carlisle-Lebanon area (the four-county region), we have more than 667,000 people. That put us at 55th on the Census Bureau’s “combined statistical area” list, which isn’t too shabby.

To expand that even further, nearly 1.9 million people live within an hour’s drive of Harrisburg International Airport.

If we band together as a region, we are a location with a lot to offer — to tourists and businesses.

Now would be a particularly astute time to promote our region given that next summer is the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg.

We will see an uptick of tourism and articles about central Pennsylvania. The new Frontier Airlines route with direct flights from HIA to Denver also opens our area to a new part of America.

As cheesy as West Virginia’s “wild and wonderful” slogan is, perhaps it’s time to get one of our own. It would be stronger than the fragmented approach of our various local visitors bureaus.

Marketing and thinking as a region also makes business sense. Many residents are happy, but they often wish there were a wider variety of retail and dining options.

Chains such as grocery store Trader Joe’s, a favorite among young people, and clothing store Ann Taylor, popular among women, often overlook us because they think we are too small and, let’s face it, too “rural.”

Those stereotypes might have been true decades ago, but no longer. There’s a reason Forbes.com ranks us as fifth on its list of America’s Most Livable Cities.
The local chambers of commerce and government officials have a role to play as they go to trade conventions and pitch our region to businesses.

Those of us who live here — whether on the East Shore, West Shore, Hershey, Carlisle, Harrisburg, Lebanon, York or Gettysburg — also need to start talking about our region and the benefits of living and visiting here.

No, it’s not paradise, but it has a lot to offer and could have even more if we talked ourselves up.